“I wonder if I can write this history, or if on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound.”

“All words are written in the same ink,'flower' and 'power,' say, are much the same,and though I might write 'blood, blood, blood'all over the page, the paper would not be stainednow would I bleed.”

“Yet I am not writing with ordinary ink, but with red blood that dripsfrom my heart. All its wounds long scarred over have opened and itthrobs and hurts, and now and then a tear falls on the paper.”

“I have often believed the pen to be a needle, and ink to be a thread. Each story is an intricately woven tapestry and with each word I invariably sew a piece of myself into the page.”

“As I work in the afternoon on committing to paper some of my morning's thoughts, I find myself just about to close on the knotty question of whether or not I believe in God. In fact I am about to type, 'I do not believe in God', when the sky goes black as ink, there is a thunderclap and a huge crash of thunder and a downpour of epic proportions. I never do complete the sentence.”

“Startled, I accidently knock over my inkwell. A black tsunami of ink sprawls out across the page, engulfing the tiny village of my words. They are swept away into the midnight sea. Gone forever. I am bereft.”